Photo by DALL-E.

For many years, I’ve given a talk on New Year’s resolutions at our annual Integral Yoga New Year’s Retreat. I focus mainly on setting achievable goals for a regular spiritual practice of poses, breathing, relaxation and meditation. Here’s a few suggestions from that talk:

1. Set a small, reasonable goal for a certain amount of time for each practice you want to do daily. Then immediately cut it in half. That becomes your daily minimum. Try that. If you don’t succeed at that, then cut that time in half. Keep cutting until you find how much you really will do, even if it’s one minute for each practice. Then stick to that as your daily minimum.

For example, Swami Satchidananda recommends meditating a minimum of 15 minutes twice a day for meditation. So, when I started my regular practice, I set a minimum of 15 minutes once a day (which equaled half the time I wanted to do). That’s been my rock solid minimum for many years. Most days I’ll do far more, but if I’m very sick in bed, I lie there and do 15 minutes of japa. Even if the meditation is unfocused, I’ve still met my goal.

Setting a small goal and accomplishing it daily develops will power and gives you confidence in your own power to meet your goals in life, not just in spiritual practice.

2. Have a chart where you check your practice off daily. Studies have shown tracking your progress is one important key to success.
3. Make some small change to your environment to make it easy to do your practice. For example, if you want to do Hatha Yoga daily, leave a mat out in a corner of a room and don’t put it away. Then you can take a few minutes to do Hatha Yoga with no need for any preparation. Researchers found that as little as five minutes of moderate-to-vigorous activity a day may have a positive effect on health in the long term.
4. Make your Yoga as yummy as possible. Make it feel as good as you can. You’re more likely to stick with it if you enjoy it while you do it. Challenge yourself for the fun of it.
5. Have a purpose partner, a supportive friend with whom you check in about your progress toward keeping your goals. This is another technique studies have shown to help you meet your goals. It’s best to set it up so you tell them how you did and they don’t express a negative judgment. They don’t offer advice, or chide you, unless you ask them to do so that day. They can offer a gentle word of support.
6. Don’t expect bliss in your practices every day, especially meditation. You’re often just cleaning out what will keep you from being focused and relaxed the rest of the day.

We often make the mistake of giving up if the meditation is unfocused or if painful thoughts come up. We underestimate the immense benefit of getting to know the mind on every level. Carl Jung said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” Our undigested past conditioning leads to knee-jerk reactions that cause so much pain and misunderstanding in our lives. Sitting with your mind for a given amount time, no matter what comes up, is a powerful, life-changing practice. You want to use some self-soothing technique like mantra repetition or simple breath awareness so that the mind knows it is loved and accepted exactly like it is, and it’s safe to let you see what’s going on. When you know your unconscious patterns, you can use the tools of Yoga skillfully to help you change them.

7. Prepare for backsliding. If you remind yourself that most people slip sometimes before they succeed, you’ll be less likely to give up when you do miss a day or a few. You’ll think, “Yes, that’s normal” and get back on the routine vs. telling yourself “I can’t do this!”

All these hints can be summarized in a saying I heard from our Ashram comedian Swami Murugananda: “Start slow, and then taper off.” To which I add: After you taper off, stick with your brief yummy Yoga. If you make it feel good, your minimum will gently, automatically get longer because you’re feeling joy and seeing your good habit build every day.

“Come, come, whoever you are
Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving.
It doesn’t matter
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times.
Come, yet again, come, come.”
~Rumi

About the Author:

Swami Vidyananda, E-RYT 500, C-IAYT has been practicing Yoga since 1969 and teaching Integral Yoga internationally since 1973. For many years she traveled with Sri Swami Satchidananda serving as his translator into French. She has taught in many therapeutic programs, including for people with cancer, Yoga for university students with eating disorders, and Yoga for children with learning disabilities. She has taught Yoga for Stress Relief around the world. She has served as a Yoga Therapist since 1979. She co-developed the Integral Yoga Stress Management Teacher Training program with Swami Ramananda and has taught it for over 25 years. Swami Vidyananda lives in Yogaville, Virginia, where she teaches meditation, Raja Yoga, and all branches of Integral Yoga. She also serves as chairperson of the Integral Yoga teachers Council, and as director of the Integral Yoga Therapy Training Program.

The post Resolutions That Last: The Art of Sustainable Spiritual Practice appeared first on Integral Yoga® Magazine.

St. Teresa de Avila

A few years ago, I read an article titled “Humility, The Virtue No One Wants.” It was a good title, I thought, because humility is maybe just a little too close to the word humiliation for comfort, a bit like shame, the sort of thing we think we’d like to get away from. I was looking for teachings on humility because at the time, I was reading a lot of St. Teresa de Avila and she considered humility, along with love, the quality most essential for spiritual growth.

St. Teresa is difficult to read, and part of that is because she spends pages and pages, over and over again, professing her humility, apologizing for being such a stupid woman, so much less than her superiors. From 21^st century standards, this is so over the top that I thought it might have been her way of surviving the 16th century Spanish inquisition and the male dominated church of that time. And that could be partially true. But I also could see that she was absolutely sincere – humility was the ground of her practice. At the same time she was very sure of her relation to God, and to her journey; she was confident.

The Webster dictionary defines humility as freedom from pride or arrogance. There’s certainly nothing shameful there. We can see this kind of true humility kick in when we finally give up any pretense of running the show. Humility includes the ability to be honest with ourselves about the inconvenient, painful fact that anything can happen at any time.

Maybe we think that, if we were really doing our practice right, nothing unpleasant or unwholesome would ever pop up or bother us, but that’s not the case. The pleasant, the unpleasant and the neutral can all show up, and if we let them they’ll also roll away. We see that when we sit down to meditate.

Another thing that brings up humility is the fact that the more present we become for our lives, the more willing we are to look at what arises, the more impurity we’re going to see. Spiritual practice is a purification process that calls for a lot of humility. The more we purify, the bigger and closer to the bone the impurities will seem. We become more sensitive to them and it can pain us more to see them. So in this process it’s important to not get lost in identifying with our impurities, our thoughts, our fears, our ‘spiritual progress.’ Those things are not who we really are – I say that to myself sometimes, ‘not who I really am’ – they’re just thoughts or feelings, ideas or constructs or moods or sensations.

There’s a teaching story about two little flies that lived in the barn with the farm animals, that were the best of friends, that flew around together every day. One morning one of the flies woke up and couldn’t find his friend. He looked all over the barn, high and low, and finally he gave up. But when the oxen came in from the fields that evening,  there was his friend, riding on one of the horns of an ox. “Where have you been all day?” the one little fly asked, and his friend puffed up his chest and said, importantly,  “We’ve been plowing.’ And the teaching is that we all think it’s us doing things, we’re all so busy and full of our importance, but really, we’re just riding on the horns of the great beast. Life carries us until it puts us down.

Understanding this brings us the kind of humility that Saint Teresa had, the kind of humility that supports confidence in our practice. When this happens we can stop referring to the constructed idea of ourselves and the personal gain or loss of that construction and start listening to the awareness that’s inside us that is unstoppable, unlimitable. We can align with that and learn to listen to it, in daily life and in meditation. And of course, a big part of the training ground for that is meditation.

About the Author:

The post The Essential Quality for Spiritual Growth appeared first on Integral Yoga® Magazine.

Photo: Integral Yoga Institute, San Francisco. Experience a profound rejuvenation of body, mind and spirit by immersing yourself in a personal retreat at Integral Yoga Institute. Relax and unwind at our urban Ashram, where you will find space for self-reflection and intentional self-care, in the heart of San Francisco’s beautiful Mission-Noe Valley neighborhood. This an ongoing offering. Additional night-stays are available.

The post Integral Yoga San Francisco Announces Ongoing Personal Retreat Offerings appeared first on Integral Yoga® Magazine.

Photo by Cotton Bro via Pexels.

The secret of spiritual practice is not what you do but how you do—that is more important. Sometimes a newcomer who gets into spiritual practice will make a big list of resolutions, “I will practice half an hour every day in the morning, pranayama, three malas every morning, three malas every evening. I will write likhit japa. I will do this. I will do that. I will sleep only four hours a day.” I have seen a lot of resolutions like that. And probably they last only for a couple of days and then one by one, one by one they drop away. So, instead of taking on too many things, take one thing and stay with that at any cost.

The real secret to success in spiritual practice is that through steadfastness you will have mastered your mind. You made a vow and you are sticking to that. Tests will come.  Where is the proof that you are sticking to your word, that you have mastered your mind? God will send tests. It’s not easy. You have to face the test and pass it. If you stick to that and pass it, you proved that you are the master, not your mind.

How often do we make resolves and then we slip. One day you say, “Well, I’ll fast on Monday on just water alone.” But, by 11:30 a.m. your long lost sister will be coming to see you with a nice apple pie. Really, it’s God who sends your sister with an apple pie to test your resolve. But of course your ego will convince you to put your resolve aside with thoughts like, “Well, Mondays will come again and again. My sister won’t come this often. After so many years she’s coming. How lovingly she prepared this and brought it. If I say no to this will I not be breaking her heart? What is more important?  Stick to my word or hurting somebody?”

Philosophy will easily slip in. All kinds of excuses: “Oh, she will think that I am crazy, saying, ‘You and your practices!’ I think God will forgive me.” And you receive the apple pie and gobble it up. Another Monday something else will come. Tests are sure to come. And you will find good excuses to break your resolves. And they will be very logical excuses. So, the moral of the story is to make a vow, stick to that, at any cost.  Then you have proven that you are the boss and not your mind.

It is the mind that tricks us. It always looks for every opportunity to trick us. So, a spiritual pursuit means constantly there will be a challenge between you and your mind or ego. “Who is the boss?” is the question here. You will want to say, “I am the boss,” the mind will say, “No, I have been always your boss. You have been listening to me, obeying me always. The other day I asked you to go to the movie and not to the church and you followed me? Didn’t I tell you to pick up something because it doesn’t seem to belong to anybody and nobody was there in charge, so just take it and you did.” Constantly, constantly the mind takes the upper hand and assails us through the senses and we succumb to that. If we do that then we can never achieve anything on the spiritual path.

You may be very regular in your asana, very regular in your pranayama. Even if there is something boiling, cooking in on the stove, when the bell rings you drop everything and feel, It’s meditation I have to go.  Fine, you are very strict, very punctual in your meditation but are you sticking to your commitments? That’s very important. And above all the commitments, what is the biggest commitment? Service. When a house is on fire you cannot say, “Noon is my meditation time. I made a vow, I have to go there.”  There’s no greater practice than service. Nothing should stop you from that. The mind will say something, the stomach will say, “Oh, don’t you think you are hungry, you haven’t been eating well since the past two days? How can you go and do this? You are tired and need some rest.” Excuses will come. That’s the way mind tricks.

Sometimes even unforeseen aches and pains will come the minute you think of doing something you don’t like. All of a sudden you get a cramp—from nowhere all of a sudden it comes. Then it becomes a regular habit because the mind plays through the body. It can create a headache. It can create tired feeling. It can create a nauseating feeling. And you will say, “Don’t you see, it’s genuine, I am perspiring, I can’t do my Yoga today.

Remember: As you think, so you become. If you want to be positive, think positive. If you want to be negative, think negative. What is important to you? Do you want to succeed in your spiritual pursuits? If you realize that it is important to you to do so, then the importance of thinking positive thoughts that will help to encourage your spiritual practice will come automatically. So, positive, positive thought is very important.

By Sri Swami Satchidananda

The post The Secret of Spiritual Practice appeared first on Integral Yoga® Magazine.

From a spiritual perspective, cleanliness applies to all levels of our being, from the environment that we inhabit and our physical bodies, to the inner recesses of our hearts and minds. Spring is an ideal time to de-clutter our homes and cleanse our bodies in preparation for the renewing energies of the season. Thus, Spring cleaning may mean ridding both our outer environment and our bodies of the unwanted accumulations of the past that encumber our lives and hinder our health.

Fasting is an excellent way to eliminate toxins that inhibit vitality and our potential to thrive. There are many ways of doing this to make it physically and emotionally suitable, each supporting the body’s natural ability to heal and grow. Even skipping an evening meal gives our systems a chance to cleanse themselves during the night.

Spring cleaning for our hearts and minds takes place on a much deeper level. Selfish thinking and behavior leave a psychic residue in the energy body that constricts the heart and diminishes our ability to experience love. Living with the anxiety of trying to make happiness happen, prove ourselves “worthy,” or win affection, makes for a stressful and dis-eased life.

In this deeper context, Spring cleaning means recommitting ourselves to practices that calm and quiet our overactive minds and attune us to a natural sense of inner peace. This kind of quieting can free us from grasping for happiness and, in the stillness this can bring, the heart has room to stretch out in all directions, revealing our connection to all of life. Thus, a regular practice of meditation enables us to realign with our spiritual values, and to let those values inform our motives and guide our actions.

For example, instead of trying to win someone’s love or acquire happiness, we can experience great fulfillment from giving and serving others with compassion. We can practice forgiveness toward those who may have harmed us, releasing from our hearts the poisonous feelings of ill-will or bitterness that may otherwise dwell there. We can experience extraordinary moments of wonder by being fully present to the miracles of human life, and profound gratitude for the many blessings we normally take for granted.

All of these efforts contribute to shedding the physical, emotional, and mental weight that can unnecessarily burden us. With this intention, we can cultivate awareness of the habits and thought patterns that no longer serve us, and make a conscious choice to release them, opening the door to new ways of living that bring greater peace to the mind and joy to the heart.

About the Author:

Swami Ramananda is the Executive Director of Integral Yoga Institute in San Francisco, a certified Yoga therapist, and a founding board member of the Yoga Alliance. He leads beginner, intermediate and advanced-level Yoga teacher training programs in San Francisco and teaches throughout the world. Having dedicated his life to teaching Yoga for nearly 50 years, Swami Ramananda is highly-respected senior teacher in the Integral Yoga tradition in Yoga communities worldwide. Swami Ramananda co-developed the Stress Management Teacher Training program with Swami Vidyananda, has trained many teachers to bring Yoga into corporate, hospital and medical settings, and has taught mind/body wellness programs throughout the US and abroad. He is also a co-founder of The Spiritual Action Initiative (SAI) which brings together individuals committed to working for social justice for all beings and for the care and healing of our natural world.

The post A Yogic Approach to Spring Cleaning appeared first on Integral Yoga® Magazine.

The post Working with Self-Judgment appeared first on Integral Yoga® Magazine.

The Path of Inner Contemplation

Many modern-day spiritual practitioners are following traditions that were made for a place and time that looked quite different from the modern world.  If you look at it, many of our most popular traditions were curated for the contemplative. The instructions are given for the aspirant who studied to give his or her full life to the path because of family lineage or personal calling. Teachings are often given for the ascetic. This puts many of us in a dilemma because, as important and relevant spiritual practice is in our modern lives, the spiritual ideal that has been fostered over time can actually limit us or create within us certain unrealistic images or goals.

We are busy people with full lives. However, we yearn for peace and inner quiet.  We have family and appointments and careers. However, we are taught to be unattached. We move from meditation, contemplation, or prayer to the full swing of life in a matter of minutes. When we look to our spiritual practice we can recognize that our modern-day intensity is not actually a problem. In fact, this offers us a treasure trove of lessons that can become profound material for spiritual self-inquiry.

What it Means to Reinvent the Spiritual Ideal

This is only possible if we reinvent the spiritual ideal to embrace the busy life. We can absorb the lessons of this moment no matter how challenging. What if those lessons are exactly what we need in order to open more deeply? We might then enfold that life into the practice instead of pushing away our thoughts, emotions, sensations, and perceptions as somehow invalid, problematic, or less-divine.

The spiritual self-investigation practice is about turning our attention to our own personal process of observation and awareness. When we turn inward, we can begin to unravel deep inner patterns or shields that we have created over the course our lives.  We might call this investigation toward the deep heart of the Self the Inward Path. Traditionally this model of inner practice has been prized—for good reason. Contemplation and silent commitment are described as essential to discovering our reverence to the divine within.

This highly individualized practice was born of a distant world that had far fewer distractions and options. When coupled with a deep cultural bias toward individualism in the West, the emphasis on this approach has created some real problems for the spiritual seeker.

Perhaps we think we are failing in the process self-inquiry if we continue to experience nagging thoughts or troubling emotions. We think we should have more clarity, grace, and wisdom. We think we should be quieter. Or we may feel that we should not be triggered by that certain family member or friend. On the spiritual path, we may compartmentalize our busyness and schedule a retreat or covet a certain meditation ritual to recenter and step away from it all.

This misguided understanding of perfect practice is a classic half-teaching of awakening. There are so many misunderstandings when it comes to self-inquiry, particularly non-dual self-inquiry. But this one is particularly challenging for those of us who like to follow the rules and traditions passed to us.

Returning to our Willing Heart

Can we begin to see that the whole world is conspiring to bring us back to the self-discovery of our inner heart? I don’t mean this casually. For real spiritual non-dual self-inquiry understands the gravity of this truth. The dance is just complex enough, just uncomfortable enough, that it is always giving us the material that we need to return to the heart. This is only possible if the heart is willing to stand and meet the dancer as a partner.

Walking the Outward Path

It’s time to explore the Outward Path of spiritual reverence. It’s time to engage actively with our community, with our friends and family, with our work, and to do so with the same contemplative, even ritualized, care that we use when practicing the Inward Path. We need each other for our unfoldment. We need our problems. This is just as important as our inner observation. There is a dynamic between the space we can take to notice what we notice at the point of silence and the interaction with the world around us. The two together teach us the great material that opens the heart further.

Self-inquiry on The Outward Path allows us to begin to recognize that the awakened heart needs the external world for grace and revelation just as much as it needs the internal world as an anchor. One of the mature insights of self-inquiry is that the world “out there” is also the divine, truly equal and seamless to the divine within. The ways in which we navigate our relationships with our intimates and even with strangers becomes the great meditation. This is the path of infusing the ordinary life with the extraordinary.

Meditation and What We Notice in Action

We are never apart from meditation. Meditation is not a practice that we do while closed off for certain minutes of the day, dedicated to a favorite spot, seat, or time. Meditation is how we interact with the complex, living world from validated intimacy, or awareness. It is how we notice what we notice in action. What happens when we are triggered by something someone says? We notice that. What happens when a deep pattern is opened up, leaving us feeling raw and exposed? We notice that, without pushing away we notice and we retrain ourselves to live from that validated intimate place of Self.

We must remember hold valuable the pain of life, the wisdom of our friends and teachers and living relationships, the things that stir our most hidden emotions.  We need the outside world to return us home.  If we cannot find the divine in our ordinary, if sometimes complex, lives, then we certainly will not find that divine sitting alone on a mountaintop.

On a level perhaps even more subtle and beautiful, we are served by understanding that the entire body of the earth is just an outer dance born of the inner, individual heart. The divine loves nothing more than waking up to itself, remembering itself, in every possible way and through every possible lens. This complex world is the dance, is the teacher, is the divine.

Practicing The Inner and Outer Paths Together to Reinvent the Spiritual Ideal

Let’s learn to play with life and have the courage and curiosity to understand that our inner meditations must pour outward into that dance with equal reverence to the inner noticing. At the end of the day, it is this outer world that we are all here to learn from as we take our places as students in a cosmic classroom.

About the Author:

Cynthia Abulafia has been instrumental in the creation and leadership of Yoga Soup’s 200 Hour Teacher Training, is E-RYT 500, YACEP (she teaches continuing education), IAYT (Yoga Therapy), and Pilates certified, and holds a Masters in Nutrition. She has over 25 years of study with world class teachers in several schools of Yoga, including Yoga Therapy, Ashtanga, Iyengar, Vinyasa Krama with Srivatsa Ramaswami, modern flow blends originating at Yoga Works in Santa Monica, and many beloved meditation, Advaita, non-dual Tantra, kundalini-Shakti, and self-inquiry teachers.  For more info: www.cynthiaabulafiayoga.com  (Reprinted from LA Yoga magazine)

The post Rethinking Spiritual Practice: Do We Walk the Inner or Outer Path? appeared first on Integral Yoga® Magazine.

Haven’t we all heard the saying, “God helps those who help themselves”? The Bible says, “Blessed are the pure, for they shall see God. How can they become pure? Is it God who comes and makes them pure? One has to make oneself pure to see God. So that is the relationship between grace and self-effort. With your will you make the mind one-pointed and in that still, calm and quiet mind, the grace is reflected. It is not that grace comes from somewhere; it is in you already. But, it is not recognized or reflected properly because of the disturbances in your mind.

Some will like the idea that they don’t have to do any spiritual practice and they can just receive God’s grace, which will take care of everything. If you have absolute and unshakeable faith in God, that can be possible. But, how many can have that kind of faith. So, we recommend doing certain spiritual practices that will help you progress on the spiritual path toward the goal. If you say you dislike a practice it means that you don’t like the goal.

If you are really keen to reach the goal, you will like everything that will take you toward the goal. People create a lot of troubles and difficulties for themselves by not understanding what is needed to reach a goal. It is not that easy to reach a goal. If your goal is to reach the moon, how much money must be spent and how much risk must be taken? If you dislike that, then you are not interested in the goal. It seems to be self-contradictory then, and I have to doubt about your goal itself. Do you really understand the goal and do you really want to achieve it?

So, first you should know the exact goal, and you should know that you want to reach it at any cost. If those conditions are met, then you will try any possible way to achieve it. Suppose I say that only by getting up every morning and meditating will make it possible to reach the goal of attaining enlightenment. If you dislike getting up early enough to meditate daily, then you are not interested in that goal. So we must learn to love the goal first, then nothing is impossible. That’s what is meant by the proverb, “Where there is a will, there is way.” Where there is a goal, there must be a will. See? The goal must be decided, then the will comes and when the will comes the way comes. Once the will and the way are there, and through your practice the mind becomes steady and clear, then that grace—or the light within—will shine forward.

By Sri Swami Satchidananda

The post Self-Effort and Grace appeared first on Integral Yoga® Magazine.

Fervor

Fervor is a constant longing for a goal we have set before ourselves. It is born from a sense of not being fully at home, at rest or whole until our goals are reached. We experience a kind of fervor when we are separated from our beloved for an extended time. Our thoughts go again and again to our loved one. We can’t shake the feeling that something vital is missing, that we are not whole. Contemplating this simple formula can generate fervor in sadhana: Life, sooner or later, brings suffering. Sadhana offers a way to transcend suffering

The ultimate goal of Yoga sadhana is realization of our true nature. It is the only experience that can douse the flames of suffering. The one thing we cherish most—our happiness—cannot be given, fully or permanently, by anything else. It may be a little unsettling to contemplate the fact that nothing else can give us the peace and happiness we seek. Even the glories of nature or the comfort, warmth, love and security of family life cannot fulfill this need for a state of happiness so deep and unshakable that it dissolves all sorrow.

Try this exercise: Write down ten things that define who you are. Reflect carefully. Think of those things that are the nearest and dearest to you: the most vital, those things that define who you are, such as your spouse, sense of humor, intellect, ability to make friends or reasoning power. Once you’re satisfied with your list, cross off the two least important. Think carefully before you cross off anything. You can’t get them back. They are being erased from your life. Now cross off two more, then two more. Keep going until all are scratched out. Then realize this: All of us will experience the pain of losing everything on our lists one day or other. It’s not a pleasant exercise. But there’s a bright side: sadhana can be the vital center-point of a life that frees you from this pain. No one and nothing can ever take your Self from you. It is in you, is you, and is eternally free from all suffering. Fervor is a force that brings ignorance to the brink of extinction.

Fervor doesn’t mean that you become a recluse or an off-balanced obsessive fanatic. One of the beautiful things about being a yogi is that most people don’t even have to know about your sadhana practice. You quietly go about your life, doing your daily sadhana. The special serenity that you radiate may be the only thing that gives you away.

Humility

One of the main problems with finding success in sadhana is that we can’t fully accept the power that lies in its simplicity. We are conditioned to believe that solutions to problems will come from advanced science and technology, or from experts who have mastered principles beyond our understanding. How can sitting with our attention focused on the breath, an image or sound transform our lives? Shouldn’t the solution to erasing suffering be more complex? The challenge is to be humble enough to accept the simplicity of Yoga and meditation and being willing to surrender to the practice.

Intimately connected to humility is the tantalizing capacity to be wonderstruck. It is a state of mind that revels in learning, in being surprised by life and truth. It regards the unknown, not with terror, but with interest, objectivity and openness. We know that when one is struck with wonder, words fall away. The mind becomes still and alert. The breath may stop, hence the word, “breathtaking.” We are left with wonder. The mind cannot grasp the experience in its entirety, but it doesn’t matter. We surrender to the experience. That’s part of its joy. The experience of wonder is a taste of the transcendent. It is an experience that brings with it the knowledge that every moment contains infinite possibilities. Possibilities carry with them hope and optimism.

Generosity

Generosity means to put aside desires that are limited to personal benefit in order to create a greater, more fulfilling reality. Generosity knows that nothing is lost by selfless giving. There is only gain. Generosity is a companion of compassion. We are born with an instinctive impulse to alleviate suffering, but that inclination is often blocked by suspicion, fear and personal cravings.

Generosity means more than donating to worthwhile causes. When we devote our time and energy to listen to the problems of others, allow someone with only one item to move ahead of us at the market or rejoice in the happiness of others, we are exercising generosity.

Sadhana requires a generous spirit: giving of our time and effort. It’s not really different from devoting our time and resources for a greater good. In meditation we put aside what the mind wants in order to pay attention to the object of meditation. Practicing generosity in life will lead to better meditation. Conversely, meditation will naturally lead to greater generosity in daily life. Sadhana is worthy of our time and attention. It brings benefits to those around you and to you.

Fidelity

This virtue is the backbone of success in sadhana and in any endeavor. Fidelity is continued loyalty to a person, cause or belief. It expresses as steadiness, integrity, strength and dependability, sticking to a goal and keeping our word. People who have developed fidelity have the patience, openness of heart and the courage to stay with a task to its completion. Fidelity to sadhana can transform your mind and your life. Old habits are very stubborn and resist change.

To understand why this is so, we should discuss how habits are formed. Think of the mind as being a lump of clay. A thought, as it moves across the mind, is like a pin scratching a path across a soft surface. Repeated thoughts cut through the same path and create deep grooves. The grooves create pathways along which prana, and our attention, flows. Habits are difficult to change because our mental energy tends to fall into the deepest grooves. When we begin our practice, the sadhana grooves are not very deep. With repetition, these new grooves will get deeper. Meanwhile, like unused jungle trails overgrown with plant life, old unwanted grooves begin to fill in. Old habits, their strength now diminished, will fade while new ones become strong. Over time, the new habits become so deeply ingrained that they become part of our character. The highest benefits of sadhana cannot be realized without sadhana becoming a deeply ingrained habit.

The following are some suggestions to help you cultivate fidelity:

• Carefully set realistic goals and follow through. Use this principle in all aspects of your life. Finish the book you’ve chosen to read, go to the dinner party you may dread, complete the continuing education course on knitting even though the teacher bores you. There is no greater virtue than having your actions in alignment with your thoughts and words.
• When you give your word, keep it. It’s not easy. Think twice before speaking.
• Digging shallow wells won’t give you water. Don’t scatter your energy by flirting with commitments. Frequent changing of goals doesn’t yield much fruit. You won’t make the best and quickest progress in sadhana by taking a little here and there from different schools of thought. That can lead to confusion as well as dissipation of your energy. Superficially, Yoga and meditation styles are different, but in essence, they are one. You might miss their depth by dabbling. Go deep and experience the core. Another benefit of sticking to one thing is that you develop the capacity to prevent obstacles in sadhana. The mind becomes so steady, clear and one-pointed that you don’t have to exert much energy overcoming obstacles. Like water off a duck’s back, they naturally roll off such a mind.
• Analyze your desire for change. Carefully and patiently ask yourself why you want to look for another job, relationship or Yoga school. Sometimes, there are good reasons, especially if it means protecting yourself from harm. Much of the time, however, it is the mind being restless or resisting change, even positive change.
• Don’t become obsessed with quick results. Nothing great was ever accomplished overnight. Tend to the process; the results will take care of themselves.
• Make use of group support. Associate with others who share your goal.
• Don’t set yourself up for failure. Be honest with yourself. Set goals in which you truly believe. Don’t do things just because they are popular, or your friends encourage you to do them. If you do, you’ll lack the earnest zeal needed to succeed. Even with Yoga, if sadhana is not for you at this time, why punish yourself with it? Maybe you will be drawn to it later.
• Create a consistent practice. While it’s certainly fine to experience other techniques from time to time in order to expand your understanding of Yoga, your daily routine should be stable. Not rigid, stable. The length and content of your sadhana will evolve over time as you learn and experience more. What doesn’t work well is to make frequent and/or haphazard changes. Success belongs to those whose focus doesn’t become scattered.
• Make sure that the head and the heart agree. Your heart should experience an attraction, an exhilaration and a palpable sense of optimism with your path. At the same time, the mind should approve.
• Have faith in your path. It helps a lot if your spiritual path has a long, distinguished history. The practice of meditation involves many subtleties. A tradition that has proven itself over time is invaluable. You will enjoy the benefits of having a well tread, clearly marked path. This will also provide a context that will help integrate the changes that sadhana

Suggesting this does not imply that every valid path will be a simple repetition of every aspect of that tradition. It can be healthy for a lineage to re-package its teachings for its time and place. It helps keep them alive and relevant. The way teachings are expressed may or may not change, but the essence is always the same.

Cultivating fidelity brings challenges. The mind will present all sorts of reasons to skip a meditation session or give up sadhana altogether. Be prepared: You will experience doubts, lapses and restlessness. If you act only according to how you feel, you’ll miss a lot of sadhana and lose a lot of the benefits. Keep in mind that, because something is difficult, it doesn’t mean that it’s wrong for you. The mind resists going outside its comfort zone. If you’ve investigated the pros and cons of your decision well, stick to it.

Creativity

Creativity is an essential quality for anyone who wants to live a fulfilling life. Creativity is practical. It is one of the foundations of problem solving. For example, creativity is central to how we deal with our children when they get into mischief. It also comes into play when we try to live within our financial means when inflation outruns our income, when we have an unexpected illness or lose a job. With this in mind, we can see at least one way that meditation exercises creativity. In trying to be regular in our practice, we encounter difficult puzzles to solve: How do I take care of my partner, the dogs and pay the bills, and at the same time, tend to my sadhana? What ways can I think of to make it possible for me to be regular in my practice?

Successful practitioners are as creative as a Picasso or Mozart. They have had to overcome obstacles from within and without. They have faced every excuse the mind can conjure in order to keep the body in bed in the morning. They have encountered disappointment, set backs and doubt, and found ways to persevere. Through it all, they have managed to find joy and freedom in regular practice. If that’s not creativity, what is?

Creativity requires freedom. Creativity cannot flourish if it’s bound by blind convention or tradition, but it doesn’t abandon either. It’s a state of mind free to imagine what might be. It can envision people and objects in diverse contexts and exhibiting different behaviors. Creativity harnesses the powers of imagination and hope in order to manifest a better reality. Creativity cannot survive without courage. The fear of failure smothers creative impulses. Let the mind soar. Let it conjure—at least for a few moments—realities that could exist. Practicality can come later. Find inspiration from master musicians, athletes, dancers, cooks and entrepreneurs. Take in beautiful music, painting, sculpture, prose and poetry to open the nonverbal, creative aspects of the mind. Creativity and resourcefulness are inborn. They just need to be exercised.

Patience

Patience is not just an exercise in waiting and doing nothing until something happens. Patience is preparation, the marshaling of inner resources. Patience is alert, receptive awareness poised to respond. Each and every sadhana session brings benefit. Those benefits, like seeds that do much of their essential work underground, may remain unseen until later. Fixating daily on results can become an obstacle. Know where you are headed, but focus on the process, not the goal. You will reach your objective more quickly. Learn to value and appreciate every step of the journey. Soon you will find that the fruits of sadhana are not only often different—but they are greater—than you have imagined.

About the Author:

Rev. Jaganath Carrera

Reverend Jaganath Carrera is an Integral Yoga Minister and the founder/spiritual head of Yoga Life Society. He is a direct disciple of world renowned Yoga master and leader in the interfaith movement, Sri Swami Satchidananda—the founder and spiritual guide of Satchidananda Ashram–Yogaville and Integral Yoga International. Rev. Jaganath has taught at universities, prisons, Yoga centers, and interfaith programs both in the USA and abroad. He was a principal instructor of both Hatha and Raja Yoga for the Integral Yoga Teacher Training Certification Programs for over twenty years and co-wrote the training manual used for that course. He established the Integral Yoga Ministry and developed the highly regarded Integral Yoga Meditation and Raja Yoga Teacher Training Certification programs. He served for eight years as chief administrator of Satchidananda Ashram–Yogaville and founded the Integral Yoga Institute of New Brunswick, NJ. He is also a spiritual advisor and visiting lecturer on Hinduism for the One Spirit Seminary in New York City. Reverend Jaganath is the author of Inside the Yoga Sutras: A Sourcebook for the Study and Practice of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, published by Integral Yoga Publications. His latest book, Inside Patanjali’s Words, is widely available.

The post Six Qualities to Cultivate in Sadhana appeared first on Integral Yoga® Magazine.

As spiritual aspirants, pausing to reflect on our behavior, and the thoughts and motives behind it, are an essential part of the spiritual path. Increased self-awareness enables us to disentangle ourselves from the habitual thought patterns that cloud our vision. Then we can uncover the roots of our suffering and expose the unconscious beliefs that are the seeds for frustration and struggle. There are significant obstacles to reflecting this way. Taking an honest look at the difficult moments in our lives can be challenging. Allowing ourselves to feel the sorrow or anxiety in our hearts is painful and can make us feel ashamed or depressed. For many of us, acknowledging our struggles threatens the image we are trying to live up to and project to others.

Instead of stopping to reflect on a moment of discomfort, we may simply divert our attention to some form of entertainment or escape, like checking messages or social media. In this digital age, our senses are constantly drawn outward by our numerous devices, making it easy to ignore feelings of angst or upset, and leaving no time to understand the reasons behind them.

One way to support an effort to sincerely look at ourselves is to talk with a trusted friend or therapist, someone with whom we can be completely honest. We may need the safety of their genuine care to allow ourselves to look in the dark corners of our hearts and allow ourselves to explore painful emotions. When we are able to release our anger or grief, we can often see the unhealthy expectations or desires that gave rise to it. For example, we all like compliments and it can be insightful to see how easily we become angry or hurt when we are criticized. Looking objectively, we can see how our desire to be liked or admired compels us to go to great lengths to make ourselves look good or protect our self-image.

Writing regularly in a journal is another beneficial practice for self-reflection. Knowing it is only for our eyes, we can train ourselves to bare our souls without fear. We can experiment with giving a voice to our confusing feelings to see what lies beneath the compulsive behaviors that even we may not understand. What hidden need might compel me to twist the truth, fall again into an addictive habit, take more than my share, or blurt out some hurtful words?

A regular meditative practice makes it possible to stand apart from our own minds with enough mental strength and clarity to ask such questions. Meditation develops the neutral awareness needed to analyze our behavior without identifying with or rationalizing it. Only with such mindfulness will we be able to catch ourselves before reacting on impulse and slow down enough to make a conscious choice instead. Making conscious choices is the only way we can expect to keep our balance and maintain a positive frame of mind in a world full of ever-changing circumstances beyond our control. We empower ourselves not by successfully controlling things around us, but by choosing to think and act guided by the deeper voice of the Self that keeps our hearts open and free of selfishness.

Taking time to reflect need not only apply to difficulty. Reflecting on the many gifts we have received keeps the difficulties in perspective and reminds us of how blessed we are. Keeping the big picture in mind—knowing we are safe, relatively healthy, and have more than adequate food and shelter—exposes the petty nature of many of our problems. And if we are serious about wanting to experience the unchanging peace that is our birthright, we must welcome the suffering that challenges us to seek it. Looking deeply, we have the opportunity to see how much of our pain is self-inflicted, often from clinging to things that don’t last. Letting go of our efforts to arrange for some form of external happiness, we are free to experience the natural joy that comes from accepting what life brings us. Letting go of judgement, we are free to more fully extend loving acceptance to ourselves each other.

About the Author:

Swami Ramananda is the president of the Integral Yoga Institute of San Francisco and a greatly respected master teacher in the Integral Yoga tradition, who has been practicing Yoga for more than 35 years. He offers practical methods for integrating the timeless teachings and practices of Yoga into daily life. He leads beginner, intermediate, and advanced-level Yoga Teacher Training programs in San Francisco and a variety of programs in many locations in the United States, Europe, and South America. Swami Ramananda trains Yoga teachers to carry Yoga into corporate, hospital, and medical settings and has taught mind/body wellness programs in many places. He is a founding board member of the Yoga Alliance, a national registry that supports and promotes Yoga teachers as professionals. 

The post Self-Reflection as a Spiritual Practice appeared first on Integral Yoga® Magazine.

Turiya is the attainment of Yoga, of a superconscious state of mind. Yogis who master consciousness are able to condense sleep to the extent of going beyond “sleep,” to the state of turiya, often called the sleepless sleep. My experience of the states of turiya was with my Guru Ayya, who meditated near the peak of Arunachala mountain. He drank a glass of milk a day, never moved, and never slept. Throughout the night, I would climb up the mountain to be near his cave enclosure and meditate. In the beginning, my need to sit near Ayya came from curiosity—what made Ayya love his solitude and inner journey so much that he completely cut himself off from the external world and journey within?

Once a day, early in the morning, his devotees would remove thorn bushes that blocked Ayya’s cave entrance and Ayya would start a fire to make herbal tea. All pilgrims who came to see Ayya were served this tea. He seldom spoke to anyone other than his helpers. After two hours, the helpers would again close up the entrance of the cave so Ayya could enter back into his solitude until the next day. I spent my time sitting outside the cave wanting to absorb his meditative energies. Through the night, I heard Ayya speaking to the Divine. Sometimes he would burst into ecstasy, singing. He was in a vortex of powerful energies, in a state of perpetual overflowing joy. It was now easy to understand how Ayya had transcended sleep—he was in realms of turiya.

Sleep, and mastery of sleep, is the vital element in attaining the states of turiya. My quest to learn more about sleep made me eager to ask enlightened masters. In my pilgrimages, during my years seeking my light within through solitude, was another of my Gurus: Siddha Maha Siva Swamy. Maha Siva Swamy lived in a forest shrine of Nambi Hills, a tiger sanctuary, all by himself. I enjoyed every moment with him, as he would always hear my questions and provide answers. I remember walking with him through the jungle to reach Nambi Hills. Initially, it felt eerie and unsafe, as I knew this was a tiger sanctuary and only a few would walk into this forest. I asked him if he ever felt afraid walking there all by himself. He smiled at me and said, “Tigers walk away from humans, sensing us. But some tigers are too old. One old tiger would sit over there and roar. Its roar was so weak, unlike others. But they never will harm me.” I did not tell him how that old tiger could have become a maneater. I felt safe with him knowing he must have higher vibrations safeguarding him.

When we reached this sacred shrine, after a five-mile walk through the forest, we bathed in the jungle stream and, in the evening, did our puja (worship). As night came, I told Maha Siva Swamy I needed to learn how to sleep. I had watched him enter into samadhi, a state of meditative consciousness, many times, with ease. Any time he entered into samadhi, the whole area around him would buzz in light. I was certain that if he could enter into samadhi with so much ease and meditate through days and nights, he must have mastered the art of sleep.

We lay side by side near the ancient temple entrance on the ground with cloth underneath me. He did not need anything underneath him. I asked him what he was doing with his breath and how he was preparing his mind for sleep. He said, “Go into the mantra fires. Surrender your breath. Descend into your heart. Fall asleep there.” I spent the next few minutes trying what he told me. A few minutes later, I was ready to ask the next few questions. I said, “Swamy, now that I am in my heart, now what?”—and all I heard was his snoring. He was fast asleep, in another world. Soon, I fell asleep too.

What I learnt from these moments with Guru Ayya and Guru Maha Siva Swamy is that our minds are on a journey. They travel between states of being awake, asleep, and in realms beyond sleep, in altered states of consciousness. These yogis have mastered consciousness itself by being able to enter the sleepless sleep realms of turiya.

Ever since, I have delved deep to make sense of sleep and to understand sleep as a tool of well-being, an instrument to intense meditation, and a proponent to enhance the mind’s clarity.

Practical Steps to Yogic Sleep:

o Throughout the day, attain, maintain, and generate an ease of mind. Do Yoga, meditate, and do pranayama; run, play basketball, or walk. Doing physical activities tunes the mind into a long-lasting meditative experience.

o Doing puja (worship of the Divine) or offering prayers helps set the mind in a meditative state throughout the day. Prayers help us discard worries, anxieties, and stress.

o With every breath, enter into your core of harmony with retention, mindfulness, and awareness. Being in a continuous meditative state throughout the day nourishes the mind so it requires less time to revitalize. The meditative mind sleeps effectively.

o Set a daily time to shut down your work and prepare for bed. Scheduling sleep helps the mind subconsciously tune into the sleep-ready mode.

o Just before getting to bed, shower, bathe, or wash your face and forehead. Water, as an energy, cleanses away unwanted thoughts.

o Do gentle stretches or meditative Yoga before bed if feeling unable to cope with stress or worries. The best Yoga always happens when our mind is low. Yoga helps us come back into our body.

o Meditate using mantra chants, even if for just five minutes. Make this moment a time of prayer. Surrender all experiences, thoughts, anxieties, needs, wishes, fears, and emotions into the mantra fires. Let go of realities to the Divine Source, God. No realities belonged to us before birth; now in sleep, consider it the moment of death when all realities are surrendered to Source.

The Process:

o Select consciousness-expanding books. Set a habit to read before sleeping every day. Reading conscious books imprints the mind with good thoughts.

o Lay down on the bed, turning over to the left side. Use pillows or your elbow as a prop and start reading. Be aware of the right-side breath that gains predominance as we rest our body on the left. We are tapping into the moon energies of breath, the energies that activate sleep.

o Sleep will come soon, especially if the book is philosophical in nature. Chase sleep away by choosing to read more; affirm for yourself that the night is young and we have all night to read. Sleep will come as a threatening lion or a cute puppy wanting to be held. Chase it away! Close eyes a minute when sleepiness gets heavy. Then start reading again.

o Now, we are ready to sleep. Put away the book. Flip over to the right side. Start reciting a mantra that makes us feel connected to Source. Enter into the heart, like allowing ourselves to float away into the womb of light.

o Step into the timelessness of sleep, like meditation. The mind flows into states of deep sleep where dream occurrence is rare. With practice, in this womb state, we gradually activate more awareness of our mantra vibration, of our unconscious mind connected to Source. In this sleep, our mind is incubated like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly; we transform from human to angelic. This yogic sleep reduces in time due to its depth and intensity and ability to serve the mind and body in rejuvenation.

o Upon waking up, the first thoughts on arising out of sleep is reaching out to the mantra recitation and connecting our mind to Source. Our first thoughts, “Please God Source, give me the right thoughts.” For your first prayer, rub both the palms together, thinking of our Mother as our left palm and our Father as our right palm. Feel gratitude in every cell in your body for our mothers and fathers. Place your hands over your eyelids in gratitude.

o Let gratefulness be your vibrancy, gifted by the depth of your sleep. We are now the vibrations that align and manifest all that our hearts intend.

Interesting Observations about Yogic Sleep:

o In this depth of sleep, there are no dreams. Sleep is like death.

o The amount of time we need to sleep is reduced.

o We wake up feeling like we slept “a hundred years.”

o We wake up with a crystal clear mind.

About the Author:

Nandhiji Yogi is a Siddha yogi, humanitarian, and visionary, awakening humanity through mystic wisdom, community, and service. He is an artist, ecstatic chant musician, author, and teacher, representing the path of the Liberated. He lives in Los Angeles, where he shares the life-enhancing wisdom and teachings of the Siddhar sages, the liberated mystics of South India. Nandhiji was gifted with a childhood experience of the Divine when he was four years old. Later, as a young adult, while leading an active family life, he was initiated through a death experience by his first Guru, and his journey into the mystical realm of the Siddhas as a yogi began. After years of seeking “wholeness” through connection with the inner world, Nandhiji woke up to understand his highest purpose: to uplift humanity in consciousness. One of the fruits of his journey are offered in Mastery of Consciousness. Nandhiji says, “When we awaken the inner lamp, we liberate ourselves to the grace of our own wisdom, our Inner Guru, Consciousness!” Nandhiji envisions a humanity awake through yogic wisdom, enterprise, and community. Find out more on his website.  (Reprinted from Elephant Journal)

The post The Art of Sleeping like a Yogi appeared first on Integral Yoga® Magazine.

So, when a friend came back from a 10-day silent retreat last year and shared the incredible things he’d experienced, I was determined to sign up for one myself. Of course COVID-19 came along and joining a retreat became impossible. But, I didn’t let that stop me—I decided to run my own at home. The outcome?  A great experience filled with powerful insights that changed the way I look at life.

It was such a profound experience, I could probably write a book about it, but to make things easier—here are my key takeaways:

We’re Addicted to Stimulation

As someone who loves being productive and proactive, I was shocked to realize how so many of my daily actions were driven by a mindless need to be busy. We live in a world that is always on, we’re constantly surrounded by noise, and this has turned us into stimulation addicts.

Do you feel empty if you’re not engaged in some sort of activity?

It’s in the little moments such as making a coffee when tired, mindlessly opening our phone, or even thinking about a potential future outcome—that we struggle to live and appreciate the present moment.

I could clearly see how my mind was taking me places as if it was trying to escape the present moment.

The biggest realization I had through the prolonged periods of silence was that every impression in my mind was purely instinctive and out of my control. Eventually, the long meditation sessions enabled me to create a space between the external solicitations and my actions. I felt as if every movement or gesture was coming from a greater place of presence; I was able to appreciate little moments such as looking out of my window and admiring the beauty of the sky.

How can you experience a deeper connection with things when your mind is surmounted by thousands of other thoughts?

We Should Appreciate Sufficiency

When I normally take “me time,” I love to explore ideas, think about the future, and question possible outcomes. I was secretly hoping that while doing this “retreat,” I’d be able to unlock my creative thinking and come up with my next big idea. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the contrary happened. My need for complex thinking was replaced with a deep desire to reconnect with myself and the simplicity of life. It was as if my needs were gone—I was able to experience a greater body, mind, and heart connection.

During the silent retreat, I would occasionally break things up with a walk to the park, and even though beautiful, I could feel how it was taking me away from my inner self—I was trying to travel outward when the whole point was to move inward.

The Benefits aren’t Immediate —They are Profound.

As soon as I returned to “real life,” things felt a bit confusing; my brain was used to operating slower and more calmly—deciding what to eat felt like planning a trip to Mars.

“There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.” ~ Gandhi

The four main benefits I experienced after the silent retreat were:

o Increased self-awareness and the ability to detach from stress and anxiety.

o Clarity of thought and sharpness in actions.

o The ability to silence the noises in my head and welcome new perspectives.

o Increased self-compassion and less self-judgment.

How to Create Your Own Silent Retreat:

1. Understand the “why” behind your silence.

What is the real purpose?

What are you hoping to achieve?

Have a clear aim; it will undoubtedly impact the experience and bring new insights.

2. Do some research.

A quick search online will provide plenty of inspiration and practices you can follow during the silence. [Or register for a virtual retreat via Yogaville Online.

My main focuses were: avoiding any type of information consumption, avoiding eye contact, limiting all forms of entertainment (no screen), eating small portions of healthy vegetarian food, and five sessions of 20-minute to one-hour meditations per day.

3. Do some pre-retreat prepping.

Schedule in advance how the day is going to look: when you’ll eat, when you’ll meditate, and when you’ll sleep and wake.

All of this will help automate decisions in your day and allow more mental space to enjoy the present moment.

4. Be mindful of what you put inside your body.

Avoid alcohol and sugar as those will impact your mood. Try to keep it vegetarian, if possible, and stay low on fats.

5. Find the length that works for you.

Silent retreats can be as long as 10 days and as short as two.

6. Early to sleep, early to rise.

Most retreats tend to follow this format—I felt it worked best for me, too.

What’s an early rise? Any time between 4:00 a.m. and 5.30 a.m.

7. Find the balance that works for you.

Even though the purpose of the retreat is to avoid stimulation, I incorporated 30 minutes to one hour of “extra activities” in my days such as painting,Yoga, or a stroll in the park.

My advice is to practice activities you’ve never tried before; it allows new pathways to develop in the brain, which can bring about new insights.

8. Enjoy the present moment and manage expectations.

This is key!

Focus on the beauty of what you are experiencing, take it as it comes, and don’t expect to have revelations right from the start.

9. Give yourself a day to recover.

When the retreat ends, chances are you might feel a little slow—it will take some time to get used to “normal” conditions.

Make sure your next day is not too intense.

Enjoy your experience!

About the Author:

Fillipo di Lenardo is the cofounder of 3SSENTIA, the next generation day planner inspired by the science of well being that helps people achieve their daily goals with more balance, focus and purpose. With a profound interest in understanding what makes people tick, he loves digging deeper in all subjects relating to the science of the mind, spirituality, technology and the future of humanity.

(Reprinted from Elephant Journal)

The post Why We Need to Do a Silent Retreat (at Home) & Why We Need to Now appeared first on Integral Yoga® Magazine.